A Walk Along Sandy Hook Beach: July 1997
You tap the wood in whose crevices
History imbedded itself
And you call it "something from the sea,"
A twisted relic of what grew once
Along the prehistoric trunk line
Of green parasols, eons before
This grittiness lay here, golden gems--
Silicone grains that once formed mountains
Long before humanity came, armed
With names for seasons, names for all things,
As if that would insure survival.
You tap this wood from a tree that fell
Crashing though unheard by witnesses,
Wood adrift in time like uncoiffed horns
From a slaughtered bull, or gnarled fingers
Pointing somewhere before all this.
The 2River View, 2_4 (Summer 1998)